Saturday, May 21, 2011

Sukico

Mr Lim Kit Siang described the food served in this restaurant "vintage Hainanese cuisines". I may be wrong, I believe this veteran opposition leader is Hainanese. And he most definitely is a very busy man. His blog is almost totally of serious political stuffs. Yet he took time off to recommend Sukico to his readers.


Sukico is a small quaint restaurant in PJ Uptown. "Suki" in Hainanese apparently refers to a family or fellow Hainanese and "co" means brother. It is located a few shops away from the Uptown Public Bank on Jalan SS21/60. It had been quite awhile since we last visited the shop. We started patronizing the place after we read about it in Mr. Lim's blog. It used to be a bakery mart cum restaurant - selling baking ingredients as well as serving food. But now the bakery mart side of the shop is gone. It is now exclusively a restaurant.


The place is simple, pleasant and unpretentious. The crowd was surprisingly good. They have a celebrity corner - with pictures of some apparently well known patrons who, I am afraid, I did not recognize - including an Elvis wannabe.


But Mr. Lim's endorsement is unmistakable.


In our few visits to this shop, we did not meet the owner Cowboy Tan, mentioned in Mr. Lim's blog. We had always been attended to by a sweet old auntie, who I believe is Mrs. Cowboy Tan.


You have to be patient and cool when you dine in this restaurant, for it is not well known for its efficiency and good service. The place is obviously under-staffed. And the auntie is often muddled and forgetful. Do not be irritated if the service is slow, or if the wrong dish is served on your table, or if your drinks do not arrive. Many customers I observed, were very tolerant. I have seen customers passing dishes of food to the correct tables when they were wrongly delivered to them. It is really difficult to get angry with a sweet old lady like her.


At our last visit, we ordered a potpourri of dishes - sharing and tasting a bit of each. Mr. Lim had recommended the claypot lamb stew. I have tasted it before and believe me, it was very good. We ordered two pots to share. But sadly they were sold out. We settled for the chicken stew instead, which was equally delicious. The stew was thick and flavorful. I tasted a lot of spices in it. I believe this is a typical Hainanese stew.


We also shared a chicken chop, which was served with vege, salad, fries and mushroom sauce. It was old-fashionably nice.

 
Likewise the fish fillet...


And the lamb chop was real yummy. The portion was generous and the mint sauce that complemented it was superb.


We also had some Asian fares - starting with the Hainanese fried mee. It tasted better than it looked. The gravy was the winning grace.


We also had a couple of plates of Hokkein mee. They looked messy. But like the Hainanese mee, they were surprisingly good.


Finally, we had some veges which were quite ordinary.


Ole to Hainanese cooking and thanks to Sukico and Mr. Lim.

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